Page 68 of Twice Missing
Noah shrugged, his patience wearing thin. "Or I can get the feds on the phone and have them clarify why doing that is only making our job harder."
After a moment's consideration, the officer nodded. "All right. I'll be right back."
As the tribal cop left to collect the evidence bags, McKenzie turned to Noah, his voice low. "You think he'd be dumb enough to leave a digital trail?"
"Anything's possible," Noah replied. "He wasn't expecting SWAT to bust down his door."
"We'll still need that warrant to search it," McKenzie reminded him.
Noah's jaw tightened. "Which will only delay matters. And given Marcus' relation to Oates, that opens a window of opportunity to meddle with the data."
McKenzie's eyes widened. "Oates will go ballistic."
"Only if he finds out," Noah said, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Noah, this is not like you. You usually do things by the book."
Noah met McKenzie's gaze, his eyes hard. "Yeah, well, you can see how that's worked out. Besides, when my family got threatened, all bets were off."
McKenzie groaned, running a hand through his hair. "You really think Oates would cover for him?"
Noah didn't need to answer. The history of corruption in High Peaks spoke for itself. His trust in the system had eroded, and the tight-knit nature of the reservation community only added to his concerns.
"Reality is, we have permission to work this case," Noah said, his voice low and intense. "If Marcus has anything to do with Kayla or Emily's disappearance, either he's already wiped these phones or will make sure they get wiped before any incriminating evidence can be found. A communication online, text message, phone numbers. I need to see it."
"And how do you expect to do that?"
"Rishi," Noah replied, referring to the Adirondack County Sheriff Department's tech wizard.
As soon as the officer left them alone, Noah contacted Rishi, keeping his back to the camera in the evidence room and booting up a nearby computer.
"Please tell me this is not going to involve overtime or any shady practices," Rishi's voice crackled through the phone.
"No, just a little field experiment," Noah assured him, though his tone betrayed the lie.
With McKenzie keeping watch at the door, Noah followed Rishi's instructions, connecting the phones to the computer. The tension in the room was palpable as they raced against time, knowing that any moment, they could be discovered.
"Noah," McKenzie hissed, his eyes darting nervouslydown the hallway. "Even if we find anything, it won't be admissible in court because you didn’t get a warrant."
"We will.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Like I said, it’s just a field experiment.”
“But you want to find proof of Marcus’ involvement.”
“That's not the only purpose of the search," Noah replied, his fingers flying over the keyboard.
Realization dawned on McKenzie's face. "You want to see if Oates is covering for him."
"Bingo!" Noah confirmed, a grim smile on his face. “I figure if he has nothing to hide, the same data will be there when we get that warrant. If the warrant takes too long, we can at least form connections.”
As Rishi worked his magic remotely, backing up the data from the phones to a secure cloud server, Noah's nerves were on edge. Every sound from the hallway made his heart race, knowing that discovery could mean the end of his career.
"Are you going to search through it now?" Rishi asked as he finished with the second phone.
"No, later," Noah replied, glancing at McKenzie, who was growing increasingly agitated at his post.
